


and life's left pushing through the ferns

by elsaclack



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Stanley Uris Lives, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT), and i love mike hanlon, angst but only for part of it, lots of strong language but that's canon babey, mike hanlon loves his friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27570133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: “Is yours beating yet?” Eddie asks of Stan.Stan raises a weary brow, pressing his fingers to his jugular.  “No.  Yours?”“Why would mine be beating if yours isn’t?  We came back at the same time.”“I was mostly dead longer than you were mostly dead.  Maybe it’s about that.”Eddie scowls, and then tests his pulse point.  “Nothing.  Does that make us zombies?”Stan purses his lips thoughtfully.  “What’s your definition of a zombie?”“Undead.”“I don’t think we’re undead.  We’d have to have been all the way dead to be undead.  Were you all the way dead?”“Obviously not.  Were you?”“I thought I was.  Maybe I wasn’t.  So, no, not zombies, just - maybe still partially dead?”Eddie grunts, scowl now directed at his coffee mug.  “Comforting.”  His gaze flicks up to Mike.  “What should we do?”Mike shrugs, taken aback.  “How should I know?”
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon & Eddie Kaspbrak & Stanley Uris, Mike Hanlon & Everyone, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 42
Kudos: 181





	and life's left pushing through the ferns

**Author's Note:**

> HIIIIII
> 
> Okay this is my first fic for this fandom and I am SUPER nervous but also very excited!!! Basically I read the book last month and. have not stopped thinking about it since then so I figured why not just go on a deep-dive right into the abyss, right?
> 
> Anyways I've also been obsessively reading fics here since I finished the book, so I know for a fact that there are a thousand iterations of this exact Concept™ already on here, but there are other fics I want to write that I am too in my head about right now, and I figure this is a safe way to dip my toes in so to speak. Another cake at the dessert table, as that one Tumblr post says!
> 
> Anyways pt. 2 please please be gentle with me, I am very new here and I just really love these characters and this universe, sloppy bitch clown demons and all,,,

If anyone were to ask him later - anyone aside from his fellow Losers, that is - Mike Hanlon will tell them that he returned to Derry one measly week after leaving because he forgot a couple of things at home. Things he didn’t think he’d need at the time that he left, but had since realized were more vital than he originally anticipated.

It’s a believable enough story, if anyone who noticed his return to Derry cared enough to ask. Straggling pedestrians who watched his old beater car rumble and groan down main street, puttering along a familiar enough path - _home_ and _library_ are in the same general direction, it’s no where he hasn’t been seen driving before. They catch a glimpse of him through the windows, too, before he passes - his face a familiar mask of calm.

None of them see the objects rattling in his otherwise empty cup holder in his center console.

Though he looks calm enough from the outside, Mike feels anything but within. There’s no real reason for him to be back in Derry, after all - none that sound plausible in his mind, anyways - but here he is, driving down familiar roads, following familiar signs, like all the promises he made to himself over those long twenty-seven years were little more than words, ink long-since faded on parchment lost to a strong breeze.

To say that he’s returned to Derry of his own volition would be a reckless lie.

To say that he’s returned to Derry because of a disembodied voice and a singular image of a familiar body of water that flashes on repeat behind his closed eyelids would be just short of utter madness.

(Except maybe to Beverly - and Richie, now, too.)

Mike hasn’t told them yet, though, hasn’t told anyone about the overpowering voice that made his brain vibrate in his skull the moment he held these items - these tiny, inconsequential items - in each hand at the same time. The way he’d nearly stumbled, wide-eyed and disbelieving, clutching each item tightly as a voice most certainly not his own echoed loudly and clearly though his mind.

Bill had asked if he was okay. Mike had managed a smile - tight, unconvincing - and maybe the tears blurring his vision lent themselves to a reaction of strong grief in Bill’s eyes, for Bill merely squeezed a gentle hand over Mike’s upper arm and did not ask again.

 _Take them to the Quarry_.

They’ve been staying in a hotel near Portland for the last week, putzing around as a fractured friend group trying desperately to feel whole again, no real reason to stay except that none of them want to _go_. It’s unspoken, the fear they share - if they split off, if they go their separate ways, will they forget again?

(It’s unspoken, the care they take for each other, the way they take turns making sure Richie gets out of bed and showers and eats three meals every day and Beverly doesn’t stress-smoke too many cigarettes in one sitting and Bill doesn’t spend too long lost in a hacked-to-pieces manuscript and Ben doesn’t needlessly punish himself every time he eats more than his strict daily calorie count and Mike doesn’t sit still for too long staring down at the tokens in his hands like they’ll open up a seam in the space-time continuum and swallow him whole.

All of their hands shake, now, all the time. Mike wonders if they always will.)

 _Take them to the Quarry_.

Mike pulls his car up on the shoulder of the road, hands uneven on the gearshift as he pushes it up into park. He stays very still for a moment, placing both hands back on the wheel, staring blindly at the blurry scenery around him. He has no reason to be back here. He’s supposed to be meeting the other Losers for their last early dinner soon, and Portland is over an hour away, and he’s going to be late even if he leaves right now. Bill will be leaving on the nine-o’clock flight out of Bangor, and already Mike knows that it’s just a matter of time before the rest of them begin to scatter to the winds once more. He should be in Portland, getting ready for dinner, getting ready to say goodbye, again.

Instead he finds himself scooping a thick gold coin and an old, battered inhaler from his cup holder and stepping out of his car.

The air is just starting to lose its frigid winter bite, warm enough around the edges that, when standing in direct sunshine with his eyes closed, Mike could _swear_ he feels Spring hiding just beyond the corner. The familiar ( _pungent_ ) smell of Quarry water reaches him here, too, growing stronger with each step Mike takes toward the edge of the water, unpleasant and aching at the same time.

_Take them to the edge of the water._

Mike does as the disembodied voice says, feeling only a little silly for it - he helped defeat a fucking killer evil clown a week ago, there’s not much that feels straight-up _weird_ anymore, but he does manage to spare a thought for what he probably looks like to anyone driving by on the road behind him. The towering cliff’s edge they leapt off of a week ago looms up on his right, obscuring the sun, and Mike shivers, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He remembers this - they’d come down here once or twice around this time of year as children, so desperate for a taste of summer, despite the weather not meeting them in the middle. He smiles, fifteen-year-old Richie’s voice echoing back at him, asking how hard his nips are, how far up his gut his balls have shrunk from the cold.

(He wonders, briefly, if the Richie he’d left back in Portland would make the same jokes now. He wonders, briefly, if the Richie he’d left back in Portland will ever make a joke again.)

He makes it to the water’s edge, gazing out across a wine-colored expanse of tainted water. It’s not the first time he’s stood here like this - the last time was five months ago, actually, right before Pennywise’s signature began showing up across town again. He inhales deeply, letting the rancid smell of the Quarry fill his lungs, gripping the coin and the inhaler tightly in his hands.

“I’m here,” he says, to no one in particular, to whatever is listening. There’s a turtle, so small he could use it as a skipping stone, slowly climbing a boulder to his left. “What now?”

It’s quiet, aside from the rhythm of the water against the rocky shore and the muted sounds of the turtle making its ascent. Mike watches for a moment, and then returns his gaze to the water’s surface.

 _Throw them in_.

Mike blinks.

The coin emerges from his pocket first, glinting despite the lack of direct sunlight. Mike’s fairly certain it isn’t legal tender, judging from the almost gaudy birds he does not recognize etched into either side. It’s warm in his palm, though, gilded in real gold, the exact sort of thing he imagined Stan would have in a display case on his desk in his office in Atlanta. Beautiful, really. Mike closes his fingers over it.

The group got lucky, with Patty, who took one look at the battered five of them after stepping off her plane in Bangor and decided that they were, truly, just as desperately lost without Stan as she is. She’d pulled little things out of her carry on and pressed them into each of their hands, tears falling freely down her pretty face all the while, and Mike aches so deep in his bones he can’t draw a breath.

The inhaler, by contrast, is probably the ugliest thing Mike has ever laid eyes on. Myra hadn’t bothered coming to Maine, and the unpleasant duty of sharing the news of her late husband’s fate over a crackling phone call had fallen on Mike. She’d screamed and cried and hurled insult after insult over the phone, voice echoing through the room from the speaker, and all five of them had sat and listened in silence with varying degrees of understanding.

(Richie had his back to the phone for the duration of the call, responding only when Bill reached over to squeeze his shoulder after Myra accused them all of murdering Eddie for the third time.)

They’d gone through Eddie’s things after the call, all of them coming to a quick, resolute agreement that they would not under _any_ circumstances be sending any part of Eddie back to her. He’d mostly packed clothes, aside from the singular suitcase stuffed to the brim with more medications than Mike had ever seen in one place outside of a pharmacy; they’d all exchanged looks when Ben found five inhalers sealed in a Ziplock bag, and had wordlessly divided the inhalers amongst themselves, before Richie took the whole suitcase downstairs and threw it in the dumpster.

 _Throw them in_.

He doesn’t want to. Mike really, really doesn’t want to. He’d been the last to join their group when they were kids, only had Stan and Eddie for a fraction of the time that the rest of them did, but he’d spent the last thirty years missing them more than any of the others combined. It isn’t fair to think that, and he knows that - he _chose_ to stay behind, he _chose_ to remember - but nothing about this screams _fair_. He’s missed them like phantom limbs and all he has left of them to hold tight between his fingers are these two little things and now he’s being charged with throwing them in the fucking _Quarry_ by an actual bonafide disembodied voice inside his head.

“I don’t want to,” he tries. “I want to keep them.”

_A sacrifice is required. Give what you want to gain what you need. Throw them in._

Mike stares down, turning the coin and the inhaler over in his hands. He’s come all this way, come back to god-forsaken Derry, to the edge of the Quarry. In for a penny, in for a pound.

He rears back before he can second-guess himself and hurls the inhaler with all his might, watching it quickly shrink and wink and disappear into the water with a miniscule splash. He does the same with the coin, trying very hard not to choke on his own tears as the ripples each item makes meet in the middle and even each other out. _There_ , he thinks bitterly, _there’s your stupid sacrifice. Give me whatever it is I need and then let me be_.

For a long moment, nothing happens. The ripples dissipate, the water continues lapping at the rocks beneath his feet, the breeze whispers through the pines, the turtle continues its slow ascent to the peak of the boulder. Mike shoves his hands back into his pockets, fists clenched around nothing - nothing, he has nothing, just like last time - letting angry tears fall hot down his face. He’s due for dinner in Portland soon, but he’s here, crying at the edge of the Quarry in Derry like it’s five months earlier and he’s missing friends who don’t remember his face or his name.

He’s turning to leave when movement catches his eye.

Air bubbles disturb the surface of the water, near the place the inhaler and coin disappeared. Just a few at first, but then more, like someone’s released a heavy exhale underwater. Mike watches, transfixed, as the water’s surface begins to churn more earnestly - something’s down there, something’s struggling to break through to the surface.

He does, a moment later - a familiar head of dark brown hair, plastered to a familiar face, breath so loud and rattling Mike can hear it all the way from here.

“ _Eddie_ ,” Mike chokes.

Another head breaches the surface a moment later, just a few feet away from Eddie’s - familiar in a different way, familiar the way Bill was familiar in the low light that first night at the Jade. “Jesus fuck, _Stan_?” Eddie’s strangled voice echoes from the Quarry wall.

“ _Eddie_?”

“ _Guys_?” Mike doesn’t realize he’s already knee-deep in the water until he almost slips on an algae-slickened rock, hands flying out to find purchase on nothing right as Eddie and Stan turn in the water toward him. They’re both pale, wide-eyed, clearly confused, but they start swimming toward him.

Eddie’s closer, he reaches Mike first - Mike pulls him up quickly, and Eddie’s arms are clumsy around his middle, his feet unsteady on the rocks beneath them. “Holy fucking shit,” Eddie breathes, high-pitched. “Holy fucking _shit_.”

Stan clambers to his feet behind them, running sluggishly the last few feet through the water, before he’s plastered over Eddie’s back and grabbing at the back of Mike’s shirt, too. They stand, a dripping tangle of water-logged limbs in the middle of the Quarry, and something that has been tattered and worn in the center of Mike’s soul begins to knit itself back together again.

Stan steps back after a moment, and Eddie goes to follow, but he slips on the rocks and falls backwards into the water. He pulls a familiar, cracked pair of glasses up from under the surface in his left hand.

Mike leads them back to his car, pocketing Richie’s broken glasses as they move quickly past the tiny turtle who has finally made it to the peak of the boulder, yanking the trunk open and pulling out the stash of blankets he keeps folded there for emergencies and hands one to each of them. It doesn’t feel real, watching them hunker down under the blankets, standing close enough together that Stan’s elbow disappears from view behind Eddie’s upper arm, still dressed in the clothes they both died in. They’re all trembling, but Mike honestly can’t tell what’s from the cold and what’s -

Well. _This_.

“I died, right?” Eddie asks after a moment of hushed, shuddering breathing.

Slowly, Mike nods.

“And I - I was - in the tub?” Stan murmurs.

Again, slowly, Mike nods.

“Was I - I mean, did everyone else -”

“We’re all okay,” Mike interrupts gently, and Eddie deflates a little, the tension leaking from the hard line of his shoulders hunched beneath the blanket. “Everyone else made it out.”

Something crosses his face, then, but Mike doesn’t have time to process it before it’s gone. “And - and _it_ \- it’s _dead_ , now, for real this time?”

“It’s dead for real this time.”

“No offense, but how do you know?” asks Stan.

“The rest of us have been staying in Portland for the last week, and we can still remember everything, clear as day. The others - they said it only took a day or two for them to forget everything, the first time around.”

Stan frowns, brow furrowed. “That’s not a guarantee.”

“Think about this, then, how the fuck else would we be back right now?” Eddie asks. “I don’t know what you remember from - it wouldn’t have let us go that easily if it was still, y’know, _around_. It has to be gone. Mike wouldn’t’ve been able to - to - bring us back, or pull us out, or - whatever the fuck just happened back there,” Eddie points back in the general direction of the water, and Stan follows the direction of his finger before his eyes flick back to Eddie’s face. “It wouldn’t have let that happen, if it was still around. It’s dead. I heard it die.”

Mike swallows hard, banishing the burning lump in his throat at the memory of what followed - the hollow, broken pleas that had escaped Richie’s throat, the empty look in Eddie’s glassy eyes. It dying must have been the last thing Eddie heard before -

“It’s dead,” Stan repeats, like he’s testing the weight of the words on his tongue. “It’s dead.”

Mike nods.

“Then why is my heart not beating?”

Eddie frowns. Mike watches, frozen, as Eddie feels along his own neck with his index and middle fingers, pausing up high near the juncture of his head and throat. He presses hard, and then harder still, his frown growing more pronounced and frustrated.

“I don’t know,” Eddie snaps, dropping his hand to his chest to feel around there, too. “Mine isn’t beating, either.”

“What the fuck?” Mike breathes.

“Maybe we’re still - waking up, or whatever,” Eddie offers, knotting his fingers through the material of his blanket and hitching it closer again. “You said it’s been a week, Mike?”

“A week. Um, closer - closer to nine days for you, Stan.”

Stan blinks owlishly, searching Mike’s face. “I’m sorry,” he finally says. “I - I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to - I was scared.”

“We were _all_ scared, fuckface,” Eddie mutters, but even Mike can tell there’s no weight to his words.

“It’s okay,” Mike says as Stan rolls his eyes - affectionately, isn’t that grand, isn’t that just like in middle school when the three of them were grouped together for a project in health class and Stan kept rolling his eyes every time Eddie quietly whispered the scientific names for male and female genitalia unprovoked across the battered library table between them. Mike loves them so much, he loves them to bursting, and they’re _here_. “I understand - it’s okay.”

A shrill ringtone emanates from somewhere inside Mike’s car, and Mike starts, suddenly remembering that things like phones and other people exist. He leaves them both on the passenger’s side of the car, sheltered from the road, as he quickly wrenches the driver’s side door open and grabs his phone from the repurposed ashtray on the center console.

“It’s Bill,” he says as he straightens - and automatically, both Eddie and Stan straighten, too, readjusting their blankets up higher on their shoulders. “He’s FaceTiming.”

“Answer it,” Eddie hisses.

He does. He watches the image of his own face, framed on all sides by the familiar backdrop of imposing Maine wilderness shrink to one corner as Bill’s face fills the screen. He’s indoors, Mike can see, a background of the nondescript lobby of the hotel they’re all staying in that seems diametrically, almost comically opposed to where Mike’s standing.

Bill’s brow furrows, apparently taking in the same details of Mike’s background as Mike took of his. “Mike?” Bill says, like he’s not sure he’s called the right person.

“Yeah,” Mike leans forward, bracing his arms on the roof of his car.

“Where the h-hell are y-you? I was c-c-calling to see if you w-wanted to meet up to g-guh-go over your Italy itinerary b-before we meet for d-dinner -”

“I’m in Derry,” Mike interrupts.

Bill’s eyebrows raise. “ _Why_?”

Mike huffs out a laugh, wincing at the hysteria that cracks his voice. “It’s - it’s a long story, I think, but I’m - I found - something. Someone.”

Bill’s brows are in danger of disappearing into his hairline. “W-what’s going on?”

“It’s easier to show you, I think,” Mike says, glancing over the top of his phone at Eddie and Stan, who are watching him closely. Mike presses the button to flip the camera, and watches Bill’s face fall completely slack as Eddie raises a hand in a half-hearted kind of way.

“Is that - is that fucking - _Eddie and S-Stan?_ ”

Mike nods as he flips the camera back around, unable to tear his eyes away from Eddie and Stan. “I think you should miss your flight,” Mike says unevenly.

The image of Bill’s face blurs as Bill starts running - Mike assumes he’s running, based on the chaotic flashes of color and light strobing across the screen - and then he hears Ben’s voice, laced with concern. “ _Where are B-B-Bev and R-Richie?_ ” Bill demands. Ben responds, voice still muffled. “ _I don’t - f-fuck their s-s-smoke break, we h-have to go! R-right now!_ ” Another pause, another indiscernible response. “ _Because Mike’s in Derry and he’s got Eddie and Stan!_ ”

There’s more chaos after that, loud sounds like upturned furniture crashing to the ground, and Ben’s voice, suddenly audible, saying _I’ll find them I’ll get them let’s go_ , and then Bill’s face is back on the screen. “We’re on our way, we’ll be there as fast as we can!”

He hangs up before Mike can respond, plunging him into silence marked only by the distant sounds of birds calling in the trees behind him. Eddie and Stan are still watching from the other side of the car - shivering when a breeze kicks up from the direction of the water - and Mike’s suddenly violently aware of the fact that he’s still wet and freezing, too. “We’ll go back to my house,” he says, reaching down to unlock the doors. “I have clothes there you can borrow, we’ll wait for them there.”

They clamber into the car without argument, Eddie in the passenger’s seat and Stan in the back, and Mike is careful to note the way their weight shifts the car beneath him as he twists the keys in the ignition. They have weight, because they are solid and real, alive inside his car.

It doesn’t stop a tiny, irrational part of his brain screaming in fear at the thought of them disintegrating to dust the second he crosses some invisible boundary away from the Quarry.

They’re both still intact by the time Mike pulls into his driveway, and when he ushers them through the open front door they leave muddy tracks on the floor. Their clothes fall wet and heavy on the floor outside his bathroom, steam fallen thick over the mirror above his sink from their quick, respective showers, and they fill out borrowed sweatshirts and sweatpants that dwarf them both (Eddie looks to be on the verge of drowning, really, fingers only becoming visible after rolling the sleeves three times). They’re real. They’re real.

Mike changes quickly without showering and shoves all of their clothes in the wash, working hard to avoid looking directly at the blackened bloodstains spread across Eddie’s hoodie while untangling one of the hood’s cords from Stan’s belt loop. He makes quick work of setting up his coffee machine, absurdly missing the Keurig in the employee break room at the library for nothing other than its convenience, and as it begins to drip he makes his way back out into the living room.

One of them must have found his stash of extra blankets folded neatly in the linen closet down the hall - they’re both wrapped in patterned blankets once more. They’re both hideously ugly blankets, at that, cheap things bought at a convenience store as last-second holiday gifts from a rather unimpressive employee he’d had a few years ago, each one given for two Christmases in a row. Stan shudders beneath the uglier of the two, his eyes screwed shut, dampened hair only just beginning to curl against his forehead, and Mike sends his first belated _thanks_ to that employee for finally finding a purpose for those ugly blankets.

(It occurs to Mike that it might be more than just cold Quarry water making them shiver like that.)

“I’m making coffee,” Mike offers quietly, apologetically. Eddie flashes him a weak smile, the edges of his lips almost blue. “Should be done in just a minute - it’ll help.”

 _I hope_ , he adds in his mind.

There’s not much else to do besides fret in the kitchen, so Mike does that, watching the coffee slowly rise in its pot, occasionally peering around the doorway to ensure that this hasn’t all been one strange hallucination. At some point between peeking, Eddie gets up and moves closer to Stan; they’re side-by-side, so close their sides are flush together, and in the short time Mike surreptitiously watches from the doorway, he sees their heads tilt toward the middle at the same time, softly bumping their temples together.

Something aches and keens inside his chest.

The coffee does seem to help, once it’s cooled off enough to be bearable. Eddie drinks his black, eagerly, and Stan only makes one face after his first swig, but he’s already draining the mug before Mike can remember how to say _I have cream and sugar_ and then they’re both asking for refills.

They seem to slow down for their second helping, enough that Mike sits on the armchair catty corner to the couch they’re both sitting on, watching them wrap both hands around their mugs and shiver. None of them are speaking, save for the occasional sniffle from Eddie or Stan. Until -

“Is yours beating yet?” Eddie asks of Stan.

Stan raises a weary brow, pressing his fingers to his jugular. “No. Yours?”

“Why would mine be beating if yours isn’t? We came back at the same time.”

“I was mostly dead longer than you were mostly dead. Maybe it’s about that.”

Eddie scowls, and then tests his pulse point. “Nothing. Does that make us zombies?”

Stan purses his lips thoughtfully. “What’s your definition of a zombie?”

“Undead.”

“I don’t think we’re undead. We’d have to have been all the way dead to be undead. Were you all the way dead?”

“Obviously not. Were you?”

“I thought I was. Maybe I wasn’t. So, no, not zombies, just - maybe still partially dead?”

Eddie grunts, scowl now directed at his coffee mug. “Comforting.” His gaze flicks up to Mike. “What should we do?”

Mike shrugs, taken aback. “How should I know?”

“Because you’re the one who knows all about that, like, ancient ritual shit! Maybe you did whatever you did wrong, maybe you didn’t finish it and now we’re stuck -”

“I didn’t perform a ritual to bring you guys back,” Mike says, flushing bizarrely. “I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing when - I was just doing what some voice told me to do!”

It’s a ridiculous thing to say out loud, and he knows that, but it’s also apparently the right thing to say - both Eddie and Stan perk up at the mention of the voice, a flash of recognition lighting their eyes. “A voice?” Stan repeats, and Mike nods. “What did it tell you to do?”

“It - um - something about, like, sacrificing what I want to get what I need, or something?”

Eddie and Stan continue staring. “Isn’t that a song?” Eddie asks faintly.

“You’re thinking of ‘ _you can’t always get what you want_.’” Stan mumbles.

“Fuck.”

They look at each other, then, and Mike watches a ripple of understanding pass between them. “The turtle,” Stan says.

“The fucking turtle.”

“The what?” Mike asks.

“I thought I fucking _imagined_ that,” Eddie mutters, swiping a hand over his face. “Were you actually there, too, then?” Stan nods. “ _Fuck_. I thought it was my brain, like - I don’t know, firing off a few weird hallucinations as it died.”

“No, I was definitely there, I definitely remember the fucking turtle - did you tell him to piss off?”

“I told him to _fuck_ off, actually.”

“Oh, _my bad_.”

Eddie leans back, shoulders connecting heavily with the back of the couch. “A Jesus turtle in a raincoat, who’d’ve thought.”

“Was he wearing a raincoat? I thought - it looked more like a robe to me.”

“Who fucking _cares_?”

They fall quiet again, and Mike tries very hard not to shake his head. “I feel like I’m missing something, here.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t spend the last week almost-dead, did you? Probably a safe bet to assume we _all_ missed a few fuckin’ things.”

“Mike?” Stan’s voice is cautious, cautious enough that Mike doesn’t bother formulating any kind of a response to Eddie. “Is - did anyone, um talk to - to Patty?”

Mike nods slowly, watching dozens of emotions flicker through Stan’s gaze. “We called her the day after we killed it. She flew down and stayed with us in Portland for a couple of days. She’s really, really wonderful, Stan, you’re a very lucky man.”

Stan smiles, eyes wet, and ducks his head. “I know,” he agrees with a sniffle. “Sure as hell don’t deserve her.”

Eddie’s stare has taken on a thousand-yard quality. “I’m assuming that means you guys also called Myra?”

Mike nods.

Eddie heaves a heavy sigh. “Fuck.” he mutters. “I’m sorry, I - she’s just - um, overprotective? I guess.”

Mike nods again.

“She wants what’s best for me, really, she’s just - anything she did or said, she did it to protect me, so I’m sorry if - if it came across differently, she’s - she’s really great, once you get to know her -”

“Eddie,” Mike interrupts gently, “I’m not judging you at all.”

Eddie’s leg begins to jiggle restlessly. “There’s nothing to _judge_ ,” he says, voice pitching with defensiveness. “I’m her husband, however she reacted - she’s justified in being upset, I’d be upset too - I did abandon her, after all, I left her behind with no fuckin’ explanation or anything, just fucked off to Maine and then _died_ while I was at it -”

“It’s not your fault that you died,” Mike interrupts, much less gently than before. Eddie pauses, eyes wide. “You came back here to fulfill a promise you forgot you even made, you were strong and you saved Richie’s life and then you died protecting him, protecting _us_. I don’t know - I don’t know what Myra’s told you,” he says, voice suddenly thick, “but you don’t _need_ to be coddled, Eddie. You didn’t need to be protected when we were thirteen, and you don’t need to be protected now. You are _strong_.”

Eddie blinks, chest rising and falling quickly. “I married my fuckin’ mom,” he says faintly.

Stan purses his lips. Mike says nothing.

“I married my _fucking mom_.” Eddie repeats, voice cracking hysterically. “Oh my god, holy fucking shit - _how did I not notice that before_?”

“Same way Bev didn’t notice she married her father until she came back here.”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Eddie moans, burying his face in his hands. “It’s like a goddamn episode of Doctor _Phil_.”

Stan reaches out to pat Eddie’s shoulder comfortingly.

Mike’s phone buzzes in his pocket with a new text from Bill. _Just passed the town line_.

“They’ll be here in less than five minutes,” Mike announces as he pockets his phone. Eddie still looks shaken as his hands fall away from his face, gaunt, almost, but he nods all the same and the three of them get to their feet.

“Have I ever been happy a goddamn day in my life?” Eddie asks quietly.

Stan shrugs, eyes on the picture window facing the front of the house. “You always looked happy in that stupid hammock,” he mutters.

Richie’s ridiculous Mustang appears in a candy apple red blur two minutes later, squealing to a halt a solid foot away from the curb on the street outside. The passenger’s door is already open before the car has fully stopped moving, and Mike sees both Eddie and Stan tense as Richie spills out across the lawn in a heap of gangly limbs. They watch him spider-crawl his way back up to his feet, sprinting so fast he’s little more than a flash of clashing patterns before Mike’s front door is flung open with enough force to rattle the picture frames on the walls.

Richie looks, somehow, eight feet tall when he stumbles around the corner into the front room. Mike watches as magnified eyes sweep across the room, pausing for only the briefest millisecond on himself and Stan, and then Richie spots Eddie.

“Fucking _hell_ ,” is all Richie manages to croak before he’s across the room, faster than Mike can blink, Eddie practically hidden from view behind Richie’s body save for his arms wrapped tightly around Richie’s middle. Richie keeps stumbling forward until they collide with the far wall, one hand briefly braced against it before he folds himself completely in on Eddie.

The other three are spilling into the room, now, each of them just as wind-swept as Richie, crowding around Stan all at once. Mike watches, almost dazed, as Stan moves from person to person, looking more and more disoriented himself at the toll age has taken on all of their friends. It’s loud, loud with voices and with heavy footsteps and the quiet-but-audible way Richie’s sobbing, and -

The loose pieces rattling in Mike’s chest snap into place.

It takes an inordinate amount of time for Beverly to convince Richie to let go of Eddie long enough for everyone else to get a chance to hug him, and even when he finally does let go, he sticks close, hovering just behind Eddie as Eddie moves from person to person. Even when Richie hugs Stan, he does not take his eyes off the back of Eddie’s head.

“What the fuck happened?” Beverly asks once things have started settling down. Every eye in the room falls toward Mike.

“I honestly don’t know,” Mike says. “I just - I’ve been hearing this voice in my head -”

“You’ve been hearing a _voice_?” Ben repeats incredulously. “That’s - Mike, why didn’t you say anything? That’s not normal -”

“Is that where we’re drawing the line, now?” Richie asks faintly.

A strained laugh ripples through the group, and Mike’s heart squeezes with hope.

“Yes, I heard a voice, and it - told me to go back to Derry, with the coin Patty gave me and Eddie’s old inhaler, and it told me to throw them both into the Quarry -”

“You threw my coin into the Quarry?” asks Stan.

“It was a _sacrifice_ , are you really upset about it?”

Stan shrugs. “It was a really nice coin.”

“I’ll b-b-buy you a n-new one,” Bill says with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“I threw them both in the Quarry, and then a minute later, they - they just appeared. That’s all I know.”

“The voice told you to throw Stan’s coin and Eddie’s inhaler into the Quarry, and you just - did it?” Beverly asks.

“Are we going to pretend like our lives aren’t fucking weird enough to warrant following a disembodied voice’s instructions?” Eddie demands.

Another laugh. More hope.

“It was a sacrifice,” Mike says again. “The voice told me to give up what I wanted so that I could get what I needed, and what I wanted was the coin and the inhaler. I gave them up, and I got -” he gestures to Eddie and Stan “- in return.”

Eddie frowns down at the floor. “What you want for what you need, right?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah.”

He nods. Turns toward Richie, still just a hair’s breadth away. Richie blinks down at him, still looking a little bit dazed. “Eds?”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

Eddie seizes Richie by the collar and yanks him down just far enough to press his lips harshly to Richie’s. Richie’s frozen at first, eyes blown comically wide behind his coke bottle lenses, before the reality of the situation seemingly catches up to him and he reacts _enthusiastically_. Eddie lets out a surprised squeak, muffled against Richie’s lips, as Richie hums and sweeps both arms around Eddie’s middle and hauls him in close. They fall into an easy rhythm from there, both of their eyes closed, Richie’s fingers carding gently through Eddie’s hair as Eddie slowly, carefully traces the shape of Richie’s jaw with both hands.

Mike’s trying to remember how to wolf-whistle when Eddie suddenly pulls back from Richie with a hiss. He falls backwards, slipping through Richie’s arms and hitting the floor hard, and everyone dives forward upon belatedly realizing the expression contorting Eddie’s face is one of pain and not pleasure. “Stop, _stop_ , mother _fuck_ ,” Eddie grunts, batting stray hands away from himself with one hand and pressing the other down hard on his chest.

They watch, collective breaths held, as Eddie’s wracked with several full-body tremors. He releases a low whine from the base of his throat after the second tremor, but makes no other noise, until finally, whatever possessed him loosens its hold and he’s able to flop backwards, flat on his back, and blink dazedly up at the ceiling.

No one dares speak. Richie rocks forward, tongue visible between his teeth, looking as if he’s employing every single modicum of self-control he possesses to keep himself from touching Eddie. Eddie seems to come back to himself in pieces, massaging his chest carefully, before letting his head loll in Stan’s direction. “Well, _that_ fuckin’ did it.” he says breathlessly.

Mike’s gaze snaps up toward Stan’s face, which has gone very still. Stan clenches his jaw, a crease appearing between his brows, before he inhales sharply and tears his eyes away from Eddie’s face. “Can I please borrow someone’s phone to call Patty?” he asks the ceiling, strained.

Mike steps over Eddie’s legs and hands Stan his phone, and Stan immediately retreats to the kitchen as Eddie slowly sits up. “What the f-f-fuck was th- _that_?” Bill demands.

Richie’s self-control finally snaps and he dives down on his knees beside Eddie, his hands visibly trembling where they touch Eddie’s arm and the back of his head. “That was my heart restarting,” Eddie mutters, angling his head up to check his pulse.

“Your _heart_ -?”

“Yeah, my fuckin’ heart - hasn’t beat once since down in that fucking nightmare cave -”

“You’re sure it’s restarted?” Mike asks, crouching down on Eddie’s other side. “You’re _positive_?”

Eddie fixes him with a hard look, before seizing his hand and forcibly shoving it up into the juncture of his throat. It takes a moment, but sure enough, Mike finds Eddie’s pulse, strong and stubborn against the pads of his fingers.

“So was that, like, what? True love’s kiss, or something?” Ben asks, incredulous, as Mike retracts his hand.

“More like true love’s sloppy grope and makeout -” Beverly mutters.

“Will the fucking peanut gallery please _pipe down_?” Richie snaps over his shoulder, before shuffling closer, shoulders hunched down toward Eddie. “Are you good, Eds?”

Eddie turns toward him, eyes roving unabashed over Richie’s face; a lovely, rosy shade of pink blossoms across Eddie’s cheeks, and Mike realizes it’s the first time he’s seen any color in Eddie’s skin since well before they entered the house on Neibolt Street a week earlier. “I’m good,” Eddie says, leaning into Richie’s touch, letting Richie sit and shift him around so that they’re sprawled out on the floor together in something resembling a loose embrace. “I’m really fucking good.” he mutters into Richie’s neck.

Stan emerges from the kitchen a moment later, face shining with tears, Mike’s phone in his hand. “She’s on her way back,” he says thickly. “She’ll be here tonight.”

It’s unspoken that they’ll stay together until then. Bill cancels his flight from his phone and Mike orders pizzas, grinning around his words at Richie’s infectious laughter that expands to fill every corner of the room while Ben and Eddie and Beverly loudly argue over whether pineapple on pizza is, in fact, one of the cardinal sins. He feels it here, watching Richie tug a seething, red-faced Eddie further into his chest with hands on his hips, watching Ben hide a smile in Beverly’s hair, watching Bill and Stan mutter quietly from the couch, eyes flicking back and forth at the verbal tennis match taking place on the floor before them.

For the first time in twenty-seven years, Mike feels _whole_.

The sun has sunk far below the horizon and the pizza boxes are empty by the time Mike hears a quiet knock at his front door. It’s almost lost beneath the cacophony of Richie and Bill’s combined voices half-drunkenly belting out the chorus of a _Wham!_ song Mike hasn’t heard in thirty years; if not for Stan stiffening to Mike’s right, he probably would have assumed he’d misheard it.

Beverly, apparently also noticing Stan's reaction, shushes Bill and Richie as Mike pushes himself off the couch, and in the quiet they hear the knock again. “Ready?” Mike asks Stan.

Stan nods, looking queasy, but then he’s on his feet and following Mike into the entryway, and then Mike’s opening the front door to Patty’s pale face illuminated in the flickering front porch light, and then her bloodshot eyes slide past Mike’s face to Stan just behind him.

“ _Stan_ ,” she exhales, like a revelation.

Mike steps to the side quickly, narrowly avoiding a collision as Stan lurches forward and slams into Patty. Their embrace is brutal and unforgiving, and Mike looks away, swallowing down the sudden lump that rises in his throat at Patty’s muffled sobs. The other five are peering around the doorway, absurdly childlike in posture, except - except, now, Ben’s hand is just visible where it squeezes Beverly’s shoulder, and the flickering orange front porch light catches stark at the light hair dusted around Bill’s temples, and when Richie and Eddie share a glance it isn’t one fueled by immature teasing, but one made soft with untethered affection.

Mike loves them, desperately.

Stan’s reaction to Patty’s kiss is much the same as Eddie’s was to Richie’s, something Mike can tell Eddie finds gratifying - Stan doesn’t fall the way Eddie did, but he does stumble backwards, hip catching on the console table further back in Mike’s entry way, left hand scrabbling for purchase on the wall as his right clutches tightly at his chest. The grunt he releases in the midst of his tremors is guttural, like dirt knocked loose from cracks long-since caked over; slowly, torturously, he straightens, eyes flashing toward Eddie in wide-eyed disbelief.

“Holy _shit_.”

The day ends well after midnight with the group strewn haphazardly across Mike’s living room - Stan and Patty spooning closely on his shallow couch, Ben and Beverly whispering conspiratorially beneath the picture window, Richie and Eddie only just discernible in the shadows cast by his dining table and chairs beneath which they’ve taken shelter, Bill smiling serenely to Mike’s left. It feels like childhood all over again, memories of last-second sleepovers thrown together in the Denbroughs’ living room, quiet conversations illuminated only by the streetlights seeping in through hastily drawn curtains and the flickering blue light of the television set flashing with movie’s end credits. It’s everything he’d longed for, every cold and lonely night he slept out here alone. Everything he missed all the way down in his bones.

“C-can’t believe I’m s-saying _this_ ,” Bill murmurs, “but I’m - I’m f-f-fuh-fucking _glad_ you c-came back to D-Derry, Mike. _Really_ fucking g-glad.”

If anyone were to ask him later - anyone aside from his fellow Losers, that is - Mike Hanlon will tell them that he returned to Derry one measly week after leaving because he forgot a couple of things at home. Things he didn’t think he’d need at the time that he left, but had since realized were more vital than he originally anticipated.

It’s not _technically_ a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BE GENTLE I'm still trying to find my way!!!
> 
> I have a lot of thoughts about Losers and dumb clown movies and I'm literally bursting with need to talk about it, so PLEASE feel free to come hit me up on [Tumblr](https://elsaclack.tumblr.com/)!!!
> 
> Title is a line from the song [Back From Where I've Been by William Lawrence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-lzcaL8JT4)


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